I am a monster. An abomination. I was sobbing for the squadmates who died because of my incompetence. Where is my sympathy for all the enemies I killed during the war? Those Germans are human too. THEY ARE HUMANS TOO, and I shot and killed them without a second thought. I was a killing machine used by the United States, and they want me to be proud of it; that is the reason why I have that cursed medal. I remember the names of the squadmates who died, but what about the Germans I killed? I killed so many that I lost count. Was it in the tens or in the hundreds? I do not know a single name of the German I killed. We were strangers, yet we killed each other in that hellscape. Were we desperate for belly timber or water? No, we were desperate for our country’s approval.

  I should have felt sympathy for the human beings I came across on the battlefield instead of demonizing them and refusing to recognize their humanity. Worst, I remember taking a bag with two grenades and using it on a landship. There was something else in that bag. The hospital people assumed that everything in the bag belonged to me. I even completely forgot that I carried it back to New York. That thing was a picture. Four strangers are in that picture: two children, a man, and a woman. There is proof right there that Germans are people too. Yet, I did not think that when hell fires spread from the artillery explosions. I did not hesitate to feel the recoil of my trench gun.

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  Did the propaganda of the country make me this way? No, this is how I always have been. I viewed the workers I managed with this mindset that rejects all other possibilities. Remember the Irish potato famine? I viewed that as an excuse as I paid those Irish immigrants less than others. I did not consider that my workers have families and thought of them as mentally incompetent.

  I can fix things; I will fix myself. I do not wish to remain an ignorant monster; I wish to be a human who feels compassion for others. I still have a life in front of me when I get out of this damn prison. I will make America into its proper form. If I can manage a state, I know how to do so properly, and it is not an industrial or slave state. It is a state of acceptance, a state of self-help, a state of Yeomanism, a state of freedom, a state embracing nature, and a state without discrimination. I will become a writer under an anonymous name after I get out of this prison and spread awareness of what is under the gold gild in the United States. There is still hope, for I have seen peace activists - untainted by the most devious propaganda - existing. I swear upon my name, P?ral Naitalos, to God, that I will fix a state into its best, most holy form entangled and intertwined with nature instead of artificial constructions and metal bombs.